[K12OSN] Introducing ourselves

["Terrell Prudé Jr."]

Gianugo Altieri wrote:
>   
>    Second problem is a fat client I wish to link. It runs Fedora 8 
> with some legacy software. I'm trying to let it "open a window" on the 
> server for a graphical login, and also vice versa, i.e. let the server 
> (and therefore the thin clients) open a graphical login on it. The 
> problem is that I don't know how to do it. If I connect the fat client 
> to LTSP LAN, it grabs an IP, but that's all. It doesn't even "ping" 
> the server, let alone opening a remote desktop on it. Any suggestion?

It should certainly be able to ping the server, *if* this fat client is 
also on the LTSP client network.  If not, i. e. it's on the main company 
LAN and you're using the classic two-NIC LTSP setup, then you have two 
choices:

1.)  poke a hole in the K12 server's firewall rules for SSH and X11, or
2.)  place the Fedora 8 fat client on the LTSP client network.

I would recommend the second choice, for two reasons.  First, you don't 
need to poke any holes in the built-in packet filter for X11 (proper 
security is always good).  Second, it's just lower maintenance.

Now, once you can ping the K12 server, here's how I would handle 
graphical logins.  I will use KDE as an example, since that's what I 
happen to run.  From your K Menu, choose "Switch user", and choose 
"Start New Session".  You'll get a new graphical login screen, and one 
of the options at the lower left are two options--"Session Type" and 
"Menu".  Choose "Menu".  Of the choices, one of them is "Remote login".  
That's the one you want.  Just point that at your K12 server's IP 
address, and boom, you have a K12 login prompt.  Meanwhile, your 
"original" Fedora 8 session is still running.  To switch between them, 
you use F7 (to go back) and F8 (to go forward).

I'm not sure how easy it would be to have the clients be able to do the 
same to the Fedora 8 box, because I've never done that.  But 
fundamentally, it should be possible.  It might take some fiddling with 
some of the configuration files under /opt/ltsp/i386...or if your client 
has X11 with XDMCP built in, you should be able to configure the client 
directly.  What you want at that point is what's called an "indirect" 
X11 query.  Do some Googling for that--"indirect query", XDMCP, and X11.

--TP